


Bizarre Love Triangle

by orphan



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Fake/Pretend Relationship, Fluff and Crack, Genderbending, Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-13
Updated: 2015-09-21
Packaged: 2018-04-20 13:47:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 15,713
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4789484
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan/pseuds/orphan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Manifesting Bill Cipher in order to be his pretend date to make Pacifica jealous? Yeah, this is literally the dumbest idea Dipper's ever had. Literally.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I won't lie, I really just wanted to write a Billdip story with the title "Bizarre Love Triangle".

This is literally the dumbest idea he’s ever had. 

“Pine Tree, we’ve known each other for a while, and I gotta say; the is literally the dumbest idea you’ve ever had.”

Dipper scowls, pulling his hat lower over his eyes, hoping his blushing isn’t obvious in the dim light of the Mindscape. “I didn’t ask for your  _opinion_ ,” he snaps. “I asked if you could  _do_  it.”

Bill rears back, one hand flattening against his bow tie in affected horror. “I can devour stars and unravel realities. I can end empires and leave men clawing in existential desperation at the meaty holes where their eyes used to be. I can tell you secrets that would dissolve your mind and I can do all that without so much as creasing my suit. And you’d dare ask me whether I can do your petty errand? Please. I should leave right now. Leave, and take your liver with me as payment for wasting my time.” Bill folds his arms, eye looking upward as he feigns offence.

It’s almost certainly all for show. It’s been three years since he first encountered Bill Cipher, and if Dipper’s learnt one thing in that time, it’s that Bill is neither as powerful nor as important as he pretends to be. Still dangerous, still a demon. But still mostly a self-aggrandising show-off. Mostly.

“Look,” Dipper says. “Just tell me what you want in return.” This is a terrible, awful, horrible, no good idea. But it’s Dipper’s idea and he’s already started it. No use stopping now. 

“Pine Tree, consider it your lucky day. Because what I  _want_  and what I  _need_  to fulfill my end of your ridiculous little deal are, in this one instance, the same.”

Dipper wonders how a thing without a mouth is so adept at portraying the appearance of a smug grin. He wonders how long he can endure the twisting feeling in his belly before he throws up.

“I… How?” he says. “I know what you want, but… I’m not kidnapping anyone!”

Bill laughs, a dry, humorless bark. “Pity. But don’t twist yourself in knots. You won’t have to. All you’ll need to do is pay a little visit to Stanford’s lab, then we’re golden. You’ll be able to do it in your sleep—allegorically, not literally in this instance—no fuss, no muss. Over before you know it. One little trip to the lab, then one more little trip to the forest. Then we’re golden. As an added bonus, you’ll even learn something in the process. So, deal?” And then he’s suddenly very close, burning blue hand right under Dipper’s nose.

Dipper looks at the hand and he looks at Bill’s eye and he thinks,  _I’m going to regret this._

And then he shakes.

* * *

Getting into great uncle Ford’s lab without great uncle Ford noticing is pretty much impossible, so Dipper doesn’t bother. He has his shopping list, dictated by Bill between a half hour rant about the criminal incompetence of one Stanford Pines, because Bill hates Ford and Ford hates Bill, and also the world turns and water continues to be wet. 

Ford is Doing Something when Dipper heads into the basement-slash-lab, because Ford is always Doing Something. On another day, Dipper would be interested. Another day, not today. 

“Hi great uncle Ford just grabbing some stuff I’ll bring it right back when I’m done okay?” he calls. 

“Mm,” says Ford, hunched over his bench, weird lights crackling in the air around his head.

This seems to be all the acknowledgment Dipper’s going to get, which is fine by him. He runs through the stuff he needs; the jars of unidentifiable and unpronounceable things, the consecrated knife, the special chalk, the book of incantations. It’s Ford’s lab so everything is organized and labeled, albeit in the chaotic ciphers and patterns that make sense only to Ford. Ford and Dipper, that is, because Dipper’s spent years studying Ford’s work, and if nothing else he can figure out the man’s filing system.

He’s halfway out the door when he hears:

“Wait a minute!”

Dipper freezes, one foot off the ground, teetering pile of occult sundries heavy in his arms. The shadow that falls over him is Ford, backlit and not as tall as he used to be, or used to seem, when Dipper was twelve. But still tall enough to loom.

“Hm,” says Ford, rubbing his chin. “Athame, dried hellebore, eleven-dimensional crystals…” He scowls, and Dipper struggles not to hop from foot to foot. “Dipper! Some of these items are highly dangerous!”

“Uh…” says Dipper. 

“Here!” And then Ford is reaching off to the side, grabbing a pair of warded gloves and plastic safety goggles from atop a nearby cabinet. “Take these! Always remember what I taught you. Say it with me now: safety first.”

“Safety first,” Dipper dutifully repeats. 

“Good boy.” Ford gives an awkward smile, then ruffles Dipper’s hair in a way Dipper feels he’s long since outgrown. “You have fun now.” Dipper adds the gloves and goggles to his pile and darts from the room.

* * *

The forest hides a multitude of sins. Which is conveniently what Dipper needs right now. He’s dodged Grunkle Stan’s “Hey, kid, did you restock the—?” and his sister’s “Will you be back in time for the—?” (answer: “no” and “yes” respectively), and found an old tree stump in a glade that he’s pretty sure will work for what he needs to do. 

What he needs to do involves a chalk circle, a burnt offering, a power focus, an incantation, and—because of course it does—blood. Dipper draws the circle and starts the fire and lays out the relevant stones. It occurs to him to wonder how normal kids go about summoning demons to do their bidding. Normal kids who don’t have access to crazy great uncles and a basement full of weird.

This occurs to Dipper, but he doesn’t dwell. At least, not on that part. Mostly, he’s too busy mentally correcting his use of the term “summoning”. Ford’s favorite saying might be  _safety first_ , but his second favorite is  _sloppy language leads to sloppy outcomes_. 

Words, as great uncle Ford is fond of saying, mean things. And in this instance, the thing that Dipper means isn’t summoning. Summoning Bill isn’t this involved. Summoning Bill is something Dipper can do in his sleep, literally, and also often when he’s awake, by accident, just by encountering a problem he thinks Bill could fix. 

So. This isn’t summoning. This is  _manifesting_ , something Dipper’s never done before, for Bill or anyone else. Something he’d never really thought could be done, or really thought much about, before Bill mentioned it as being both a perquisite for solving Dipper’s problem and his payment for doing so.

When Dipper's done copying the circle and laying out the crystals, he kneels in front of the arrangement, knife in hand. He’s wearing Ford’s goggles but only one of the gloves, the one he’s holding the knife with. The blade of said knife is very sharp and very shiny, the flesh of Dipper’s palm very soft and pink. He hates it when magic calls for blood. At least, human blood. His human blood. 

Bill had been very insistent the blood be human. “No substitutions!” he’d snapped. “Your blood only. Or your sister’s. Up to you.”

No way is Dipper going to ask his sister for help with  _this_. So. His blood it is.

He takes a deep breath, the another, then slashes the knife across his palm. It takes a moment for the pain to set it, and by that stage Dipper’s already reciting the chant. His Latin is still terrible. Bill claims it makes his ears bleed. When Dipper had pointed out the obvious flaw in this, Bill’s answer had just been to snap, “Not that you’ve ever seen.”

It occurs to Dipper he might just very well be about to find out how truthful Bill was being.

His blood’s barely dripping into the offering bowl when he starts to hear Bill’s howling laughter. Faint at first, then growing louder in a Doppler-effect, as if Bill was far away and now isn’t. When the would goes gray around him, Dipper isn’t even surprised. Nor does he falter in his chanting when Bill folds in above the circle, brick-by-golden-brick. 

So far, so usual. Dipper’s seen it all a hundred times before.

He hasn’t seen what comes next. When he finishes the chant, and Bill… implodes. Folds in on himself, down to a single dark point. One implosion, then one explosion; light and sound and color.

Dipper yelps, throws himself against the dirt, gets a nose full of chalk that sends him coughing. When he opens his eyes again, the world has returned to normal. Normal colors, normal lights, as normal as it ever gets here in Gravity Falls, as if he’s just been thrown straight out of the Mindscape. 

Dipper is about to open his mouth, to ask if the ritual worked, when behind him he hears madly ringing laughter. Familiar in its general shape and outline, even if the texture on the inside doesn’t quite fit the voice he remembers.

“It worked! Hah! A-hah-hah-aah it feels good to be  _out_  of there!”

Dipper blinks, looks up.

There’s a boy sitting in the middle of the manifesting circle.

“B-Bill?”

The boy is too busy laughing to answer, looking at his hands like he’s never seen them before. It’s that, more than anything, that gives it away. 

“Oh,” says Dipper. “Oh, no. No no no no  _no_. This isn’t right. This isn’t right  _at all_!”

Dipper leaps to his feet, starts pacing back and forth across the clearing. He should’ve know, should’ve known better, should’ve realized things would go wrong. Of course they went wrong, it’s Bill he’s dealing with. Bill loves to screw with him, trip him up, make him regret his life choices. And Dipper, stupid Dipper, who’d thought maybe—just maybe—this time would be different. He’d explained what he’d wanted, and Bill had teased him but had listened, Dipper really thought he’d listened, and that the deal he’d made was fair, and Bill’s been so agreeable lately and stupid, stupid Dipper had thought that maybe, just maybe, that meant—

“Hey. Hey, Pine Tree. I’m no expert but are you supposed to be making that noise when you breathe?”

Dipper’s breath is coming fast and hard, the gulping hiccoughs he knows, in the dim and distant rational part of his brain, mean he’s having a panic attack. Knowing, as his psychologist says, is the first step, but it’s only the first step, and Dipper knows he needs to get to the second, to rip his mind out of its rut, to focus on his breath and relax his jaw but all his brain will think of is  _this is wrong I screwed up I screwed up and now Bill is free and he’s here and oh this wasn’t how it was supposed to go and what did I do wrong I tried so—_

“Hey. Maybe you need to sit down.”

Then hands are on Dipper’s arms— _Bill’s hands! Human hands!_  his mind screams—guiding him to sit down on the forest floor. It’s cold and damp and Dipper’s going to get a wet ass from it, a big wet patch on his jeans like he’s pissed himself and they’re supposed to go to the mall later, and the mall was going to be Dipper’s big chance, the launch of his big plan and—

“Breathe, Pine Tree. Breathe. In, one, two, three, out, one, two, three…”

Bill’s voice is still a whining, nasal buzz. But it’s different, coming from a human mouth. Less distortion, less reverb. Dipper closes his eyes, tries to do what the voice is telling him. Tries to focus on his breath and the counting and the solid feel of warm hands, grasped against his upper arms.

“Si-since wh-when do you kn-know how to de-deal with— with—” is what he manages, when he thinks he can.

“I’ve been in your head,” Bill says, as if this is the most normal and logical thing in the world. “I know many things about you.”

“N-not he-helping,” Dipper says which, stupidly, is a lie. Because his breathing is slowing and his mind is calming. Everything is still a mess but he can fix it, it’s not all over. He just needs to open his eyes.

He does, and the first thing he sees is Bill. Bill, who’s apparently now a boy about Dipper’s age, with smooth brown skin and a mess of loose curls in void black and sun-bleached blonde. He has two eyes, which Dipper finds startlingly odd, though the fact that one is a rich golden brown and the other is Bunsen flame blue with a pinprick pupil at least fits Bill’s assumed aesthetic. 

Other things that fit are the skinny black jeans and an oversized sweater in such a bright yellow it may as well be a creation from Mabel. At least it doesn’t have an eye on the front. 

Because Dipper is now and forever will be a loser, when he can speak again, the first words out of his mouth turn out to be:

“You’re a boy!”

Bill’s head tilts to the side, like he’s looking at Dipper through his golden eye, not his blue eye. It occurs to Dipper Bill might actually be partially blind. Or at least unused to the physical reality of binocular vision.

“Am I?” Bill asks. He looks down at himself, patting his hands down his chest and— and in other places that send Dipper’s gaze shooting to the treetops, quickly followed by a blush. “Yes, I suppose so,” Bill says, after completing his pat-down. He sounds completely unperturbed by the notion. 

“You— I can’t— This won’t work if you’re a boy!” Dipper stammers. He’s still on his ass in the damp dirt, Bill crouched over him, leaning close like he has no concept of personal space, which he quite possibly doesn’t.

“Why not?”

“B-because!” Dipper has no idea whether Bill is being dense because he likes to watch Dipper squirm, or whether he’s actually honestly not sure what the problem is. “Because I need to—” he tries. Then: “And Pacifica is—” Then: “and it just won’t  _work_  if you’re—” A gesture at Bill. “She’ll think I’m—” He mimes something with his hands. He’s not sure what he’s miming and, judging from his expression, neither is Bill. 

“I told you, Pine Tree,” Bill says. “You asked if I could be a girl and I said, ‘Sure, whatever that is’”—Dipper is 100% certain Bill knows  _exactly_  what that is, and is now just being an asshole—“and said you’d need your sister’s blood to do it.”

“You said mine would work just as well!”

“And it did! Ta-da!” Bill rocks back on his heels, gesturing to himself and grinning like he needs to get value out of a mouth that might get taken away at any moment. When Dipper fails to return the sentiment, the expression drops into a scowl. “Don’t tell me,” he says. “I said ‘just as well’ and you heard ‘just the same’.”

“Oh, man.” Dipper drops his head into his hands. “Oh, man.” Sloppy language leading to sloppy outcomes, indeed. “Okay. I can fix this. It’s not the end of the world.” He looks up. Bill is still there, still male, and still regarding Dipper with a look of petulant scorn because, okay. Maybe that wasn’t the best thing to say to  _Bill_ , of all people—or entities, or personified concepts, or whatever it is that Bill is—but still. 

Dipper stands, starts pacing, mind turning over every todo and every dot point he’s mentally listed out for the next few days. “Okay,” he says. “Okay, this will still work. I can still make it work. I just have to—” He rounds on Bill, studies Bill’s high cheekbones and soft hair. “Yeah. Yeah, this will still work. At least you look kinda… pretty? I guess.”

Bill looks down at himself. “How can you tell?” he asks. “No angles, no vertices… Two eyes? And this horrible thing?” He pulls the lips back from his teeth to demonstrate, then shudders.

Dipper doesn’t know if Bill is being serious and, honestly, doesn’t care. “I can tell,” he snaps. “You’re pretty. So we can just… just  _pretend_  you’re a girl. You can do that, right?” Then, more forceful. “I mean, do that! As part of our deal!”

Bill shrugs. “It isn’t,” he says. “But whatever.” And then he snaps his fingers, and is engulfed by cold blue fire. 

The sight makes Dipper nearly scream, has him lunging back against the closest tree, his spine hitting wood hard enough to hurt. “You— you can do magic!” He’s not proud of how much his voice squeaks when he says it. “How can you do magic?”

“You didn’t specify I couldn’t,” Bill says, studying his new outfit. Because that’s what the fire’s done, replaced Bill’s jeans with leggings and a skirt and a bunch of jewelery in gold and black and blue. “Does this work?”

“Um…” says Dipper.

It’s not that he doesn’t know about girls’ clothes, because he doesn’t. It’s because Bill looks…

Bill looks…

“Fine,” Dipper squeaks. “It’s fine!”

He is so, so screwed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In keeping with my headcanon that [Bill's singing voice sounds like Eminem](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHYDy3i3GBo)...


	2. Chapter 2

“Ugh, Dipper where have you been? We’ll be la— oh. Hello?”

Walking through the forest with a manifested, skirt-wearing Bill Cipher in tow is one thing. Walking up to Dipper’s sister is entirely another.

“Um,” says Dipper. “Mabel. This is, uh—” It occurs to him that, in all his preparation for this ridiculous plan, he’s neglected to think of an alias for Bill.

“Wil,” Bill supplies for him. Which, okay, Dipper thinks, but seriously? Mabel is going to kill him. She’s not an idiot. Is going to know _exactly_ what’s going on, and Dipper is 100% a dead man. 

“… Wil?”

Yup. Definitely a dead man. 

“That’s right,” says Bill, stepping closer to Mabel, smile bright and innocent, hands clasped together. “You must be Mabel. Dipper’s told me so much about you.”

“Has… he?” Dipper has no idea what expression accompanies that question, because he can’t look at his sister right now. Is too busy trying to hide beneath his hat and, and oh crap. Oh crap, Mabel is one thing but _great uncle Ford_ is inside and if he comes out he’s going to hold Dipper still while Mabel kills him, then resurrect Dipper’s corpse for a second go.

“How did you… meet… my brother?” Mabel is saying. Dipper is surprised her suspicion doesn’t ooze out and eat a giant smoking hole in the dirt. 

For his part, Bill launches into a long, enthusiastic, and convincing earnest story about being lost in the woods, menaced by monsters, then saved by Dipper. The story is not as heroically flattering to Dipper as he would, perhaps, have preferred, and involves a great deal of screaming, falling over, and sheer dumb luck. But by the end of it, Mabel’s voice sounds contemplative when she says, “That sounds like my brother, all right.” And when Dipper looks up, Mabel is regarding “Wil” with a kind of relaxed curiosity. “I haven’t seen you in town before,” she adds. 

“It’s my first day,” Bill lies, not entirely untruthfully. “We just moved here from Missoula.” A pause, then: “I was expecting this place to be kinda boring? But”—an anxious little laugh—“um, this has been a pretty intense day?”

“On my first day I got kidnapped by gnomes who wanted to make me into their gnome queen,” Mabel says. 

“Oh,” says Wil. Bill. Whomever. “Wow, you win.” Then she’s giggling— _he’s_ giggling—and Mabel’s giggling and Dipper says:

“Um. So, I thought, uh, Wil might like to come to the mall with us today?”

Wil gasps. “This town has a _mall_?”

“I know, right!” Mabel exclaims. “I’m like, no way is there a mall! There are only like twelve people in this whole place!”

“Twelve people and a bunch of gnomes,” corrects Wil. Then she’s giggling again, and so is Mabel, and it occurs to Dipper he is so, so screwed.

* * *

“Oh. My god. You _have_ to get these. They look so pretty with your eyes.”

Later. Dipper hears Pacifica’s voice from across the other side of the store. He’s sitting on a stool, hidden between racks of cheap plastic necklaces, wondering exactly how his life ended up so out of control.

“Dipper! Dipper!”

And then Wil— _Bill_ , Dipper has to keep reminding himself—is standing in front of him, leaning forward, holding a pair of earrings on a little piece of cardboard up next to his ears. “What do you think?” Wi— Bill asks, eyes big and soft and earnest. 

From the other side of the store, Dipper hears his sister snort. “Ugh. Don’t ask him. He has no idea.”

Dipper scowls, then says. “I think they look great? Um. They really… your eyes. And…” And then he’s leaning forward, hissing in a voice pitched only for Bill, “What do you think you’re doing?”

“What you wanted me to, Pine Tree,” Bill hisses back. Dipper startles at the voice, so harsh and grating in Bill’s regular inflection after the more lilting tone he uses for “Wil”. “Now relax, and let me do my job.” Then Bill is standing back up, again as if Dipper’s just said something intensely funny. “Mabel,” he calls. “Mabel, I think maybe your brother is a little bored?”

Then the girls—Mabel and Pacifica and Candy and Grenda and “Wil”—are in a huddle on the far side of the store, occasionally tossing glances back Dipper’s way. He huffs, tries not to feel hurt or excluded, and pulls his hat down over his eyes.

* * *

They spend the rest of the morning in the arcade, alternating between _Dancy Pants Revolution_ and the _Fight Fighters_ machine it’s taken Dipper three years to feel okay playing again. Bill, as it turns out, is terrible at the latter game but amazing at the former, and he and Grenda end up in an ultimate showdown for the title of DPR Queen. 

Dipper ends up sitting next to Pacifica on the waiting bench, both of them sweaty and flushed and gross from their previous turn. This, Dipper thinks, describes everything about his luck with girls in general but, on the other hand, he’s sitting next to Pacifica. Mabel notices, shoots him a knowing look, then drags Candy off to the other side of the arcade to play something involving basketballs and prize tickets. 

“Wow,” Pacifica says. “I wouldn’t have picked Grenda as being so good at this.”

Dipper just shrugs. “She’s pretty light on her feet when she needs to be. Grunkle Stan is the same.” With Stan, Dipper knows, it’s a boxing thing. Also a running-away-from-the-cops thing. Either way, Dipper’s used to the whole float-like-a-butterfly routine. 

There’s another moment of… It’s not silence, not with the DPR machine screaming j-pop and over-enthusiastic snark, but it is another moment of moments. Dipper is incredibly conscious of the heat from Pacifica’s thigh, of the way her eyeshadow hasn’t budged despite the sweat running down her brow. She is so unbelievably pretty, something he’s always known but only really noticed this last summer. Like, really _noticed_ noticed. She’s also funny, and determined, and super-super rich, and Dipper knows it’s not like she’d ever be interested in a zit-faced nerd like him. But…

But they are friends. After that first summer, after late-night Skype session, and Snapchats lost to a devnull void. Dipper knows more about Pacifica than he does anyone else in Gravity Falls; knows what her favorite food is and what cheers her up when she can’t deal with her father. Knows her secret love of bad 80s action flicks, knows she still has a collection of Transformers toys she can’t bear to give away. In as much as Dipper has a best friend, in as much as that best friend isn’t his sister, it’s Pacifica. He’s not sure she feels the same way—she has her own friends in Gravity Falls, the ones she hangs out with the other nine months of the year—but he thinks maybe “best friend” isn’t where they’re headed, anyway. 

Maybe. He thinks.

“So…” Pacifica says, voice suspiciously nonchalant. “Wil is pretty cute, isn’t she?”

“W-what?” Dipper stammers. He can’t help it. “I— No!” Which, okay. Was entirely the wrong answer. Like, entirely. And Pacifica is now giving him an odd little sideways smirk, knowing, and… and sad, maybe? So, okay. Maybe Dipper did answer right. Maybe.

“She said you saved her from monsters in the woods.”

“Um,” says Dipper. “Um, yes? I mean, yeah. Yeah, I… That’s what I do, right?” He laughs, or tries to. “Dipper Pines, monster saver.” Oh man that did not turn out right _at all_. Dipper wonders if maybe he should’ve bargained with Bill to teach him not to be such a loser, instead of their current arrangement. Bill, who’s pretty suauve, as far as evil anthropormorphic Doritos in abstracted eveningwear go. Too late now, he supposes.

Particularly when Pacifica is saying, “Mm,” a knowing little smirk curled across her lips. “Well. At least there’s one thing you’re good for.”

Dipper’s still wondering how to take that when the music finally stops.

* * *

Grenda wins the competition, just, and then Bill spends the next twenty minutes lying on his back on the floor, panting up at the ceiling. 

“Here,” Dipper says, crouching down next to him, holding out a bottle of water. “Drink this.”

Bill opens one eye, the gold one, and rolls it Dipper’s way. “Why?” he asks, chest heaving, thin shirt slicked near transparent with sweat. 

“Because you’ll get dehydrated and die otherwise, genius.”

Bill groans, burying his face in both hands. “How do you rotting fleshbags _do_ it?” he groans. But he takes the water. 

“You’re the one who always seems to be desperate for a body,” Dipper says. “If you don’t like it, stick to your own dimension.”

“It’s not that simple,” Bill snaps. He unscrews the cap from the water bottle, then proceeds to upend the whole thing over his face. 

“Dude!” Dipper both leaps back to avoid the splash while simultaneously shooting his hand out to stop Bill from soaking the arcade floor. “You’ll get us kicked out! I said drink, not drown yourself.”

“I’m going to die anyway,” is Bill’s verdict.

“You are such a drama queen. Twenty minutes of jumping and you’re ready for death, but slamming your head in a drawer is hilarious?”

“No,” says Bill. “Slamming _your_ head in a drawer is hilarious.”

“You are such an asshole.”

“’Tragedy is when I cut my finger’,” Bill quotes. “’Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die.’”

Dipper growls. “Sit up and drink properly.”

Bill does this, albeit with some physical effort on Dipper’s part. It’s… odd touching Bill. His skin is hot and sweaty and slick, and he smells exactly like Dipper thinks an over-exerted teen should smell (which is to say: terrible). Not to mention he has a long smear of blackheads forming down his nose. The thought that _Bill Cipher_ , of all people (entities, whatever) is going to end up with acne is so funny Dipper actually starts laughing.

“What?” snaps Bill, eyes narrowing. 

“Nothing,” Dipper says. “You’ll find out tomorrow.”

Bill’s thick brows descent into a scowl, and he seems halfway through saying something in reply when Grenda’s voice booms, “Wil! Catch!” And suddenly something yellow and fluffy is flying fast in Bill’s direction. He gets halfway through bringing a hand up to catch it when it connects with his forehead with a crack.

Grenda rushes over, booming out apologies, while Bill sits rubbing at his forehead, stuck somewhere between laughter and irritation.

Dipper picks up the yellow thing. It’s a stuffed duck, from the arcade’s prize counter. Fluffy but for its eyes and beak, which are moulded out of heavy plastic. 

“I’m sorry,” Grenda is saying, big hands hovering awkwardly in the air around Bill. Like she wants to pick him up and dust him off, but is scared of breaking him. “I just wanted to get you something. For being a good sport. I thought you’d catch it. I’m sorry.”

Dipper looks at the duck, and looks at Bill’s blue eye with its pinprick pupil. _No depth perception_ he thinks. _Huh._

* * *

After the arcade, big red mark blooming on Bill’s forehead beneath his hair, they go to the Walmart to joyride scooters up and down the aisles. Because this is the Gravity Falls Walmart, the scooters are haunted. Or possessed. Or made of cursed metal or… or _something_ , with the net result being they end up getting chased through the store by golems made from piles of random merchandise.

“Is this your doing?” Dipper hisses to Bill as they both crouch behind a big wire bin of basketballs.

“Don’t be an idiot,” Bill snaps, hand still rubbing at his duck-induced bruise. “My head hurts. Why does my head still hurt?”

Then there’s a scream Dipper recognizes as Candy, and he’s standing up, grabbing a basketball and throwing it at a golem with a, “Hey! Leave her alone you stack of cheap imported crap!” Erudite commentary on modern capitalism it may be, but a basketball is not, as it turns out, an effective weapon.

So Dipper is back to the part of his life that involves running and screaming, and getting chased by giant improbable gestalts. He ends up hiding beneath a bunk bed with Pacifica, while the golem stomps through the Walmart’s aisles, leaving a trail of discarded rubber ducks and cheap scented candles in its wake. 

“Fancy meeting you here,” Dipper tells Pacifica. As far as pick-up lines go, he thinks it’s not too bad. Given the context. 

“How do we kill it?” Pacifica asks. 

Goyim. Go figure. “It’ll have a magic word on its head,” Dipper says. “You gotta rub out a letter.”

“Oh, sure,” Pacifica says. “Easy. We’ll just—” And then the bunk bed is being lifted from the floor, and the screaming starts anew. 

“Hey you walking breach of labor laws! Over here!”

It’s Bill, standing at the far end of the aisle, holding two giant water pistols. Dipper knows exactly the moment the golem registers who Bill is, because it takes a stumbling step backward, making a sound like screaming metal Dipper realizes is, of all things, Hebrew. 

Dipper’s not well-versed enough in Hebrew to know what the thing says, or what Bill spits back, but it doesn’t sound complimentary. And then Bill is shooting, laughing a very Bill-like laugh, even as Dipper smells motor oil and solvent.

The purpose of the first becomes apparent very quickly, as the golem slips and goes down and goes down hard, bent bicycles and non-stick frying pans bouncing off it in all directions. It struggles to get up again, but the oil seems to limit its ability to hold together, turning it into a mass of semi-animated, shuddering junk. 

“Hey, Pine Tree! Catch!”

Dipper does not catch, because Bill’s throw misses by miles, the whatever-it-was landing with a soft _thwap_ right in the middle of the oily, solvent-covered junk. Dipper lunges for it anyway, trainers slipping on the slippery ground even as the golem attempts to grab at him with dismembered hands made from action figures and mascara wands. He kicks the junk aside, grabbing at Bill’s “gift”, which turns out to be a plastic-wrapped packet of steel scouring pads.

Between that and the flammable reek of the solvent, Dipper figures out the plan, aiming himself at the struggling golem’s “head”. The head made from the scooters they’d been riding not twenty minutes before. The Emet brand scooters, in fact, with matching logo in stylized Hebrew. 

“Oh, seriously?”

Dipper doesn’t know much Hebrew, but he does know this one. Holding onto the thrashing scooter isn’t easy, even less so with everything covered in thick, greasy motor oil. But he manages, and between the scouting pad and the solvent, makes short work of the _aleph_ in the scooter’s logo. As he does, he feels the mass beneath him slowly still until, with one final shudder, the magic animating it dies, and Dipper is left sitting in a pile of stinking junk, clutching a broken scooter in his hands.

* * *

“This town is not what I expected.”

Later, sitting in the food court. Dipper still stinks like a mechanic’s shop. Mabel has a cut across her cheek she’s covered with a neon green Band-Aid. Grenda is picking glass and twisted metal out of her knuckles.

The second golem had gone down harder than the first, in the sense that, by the time Dipper had found his sister, the girls were well occupied beating their own pile of animated junk into oblivion with baseball bats. Or, in Gendra’s case, fists.

“You get used to it,” Candy tells Bill, or Wil, or whomever. Patting him-slash-her on the shoulder.

“I’m not sure I want to,” Bill says, voice doing an excellent job in conveying flustered excitement. Honestly, Bill is a better actor than Dipper had expected him to be. Almost annoyingly so. Particularly when he flashes his big gold eye and thick dark eyelashes Dipper’s way. “That’s two times in one day Dipper’s saved me from being eaten by monsters.” Is he actually blushing? Because Dipper definitely is. At least Bill’s keeping his story straight.

“Don’t underestimate yourself,” Pacifica says, while Dipper’s busy staring at the ceiling. “The thing with the water pistols was really great.”

Bill makes a good show of self-deprecating mumbling, which is not an emotion Dipper thought the guy even knew how to spell, let along convincingly convey. Well… whatever. Particularly when Mabel is saying, “Why golems in the Walmart?”

“The scooters were Emet brand,” Dipper explains. “It means ‘truth’ in Hebrew. In the olden days rabbis used to write it—”

“I know _that_ ,” Mabel snaps. “I was at Hebrew School too, remember? I just wonder why now? Why today? I mean, it’s not like this is the first time we’ve ridden them. We did it last week just fine! Why was this time different?”

“The golem is a protective monster,” says Candy, whose interest extends to all things transhuman, including the creation of ancient magical robots. “So maybe they activated to protect us from something else?”

“It was chasing me and Dipper,” Pacifica points out. “What did _we_ do?”

Dipper pulls his hat lower over his eyes, and tries very hard not to look at Bill.

* * *

Valvoline and light wounds more-or-less put an end to the rest of their day, so they all split up to head home. This includes Bill, who dashed off with a cutesy wave and a, “Maybe I’ll see you around?” before Dipper can suggest anything to the contrary. Then it’s dodging his sister’s questions all the way back to the Shack, his ears burning and a queasy feeling settling in his gut.

“So Wil seems to really like you,” Mabel says at one point. Dipper spends so long trying to work out whether or not he can hear sarcasm quotes around Bill’s alias that he forgets to answer the question.

* * *

One change of clothes later, he’s headed back down into the basement, arms full of the equipment from this morning. He’d been too distracted to return it earlier, but is hoping he can sneak it all back now without great uncle Ford thinking too hard about what he used it for. That, Dipper knows, is the trick with Ford; the man’s attention is like a laser, both in its narrowness and its intensity. Escaping the beam shouldn’t be too hard, so long as something else has caught Ford’s focus. Which it usually has.

Usually, including today. Because when Dipper steps out of the elevator with a, “Hi great uncle Ford just returning stuff from earlier!” he hears a very familiar voice say:

“Oh hi, Pine Tree! Don’t mind us, we’re just having a chat about old times!” And there is Bill, sitting on Ford’s desk, swinging his Mary Janes back and forth in the air while uncle Ford turns to look at Dipper with one eyebrow twitching.

Dipper, though he will deny it later, drops the pile of stuff he’s holding and screams.

He is so, so dead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This calls for some [hyper j-pop](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLf3zWBs3CY)!


	3. Chapter 3

As it turns out, Dipper assessment of imminent death may have been premature. Actually, he gets in more trouble for dropping the crystals (“Those are expensive! And explode.”) than he does for manifesting Bill Cipher into the real world. 

“It is not a course of action I myself would have chosen,” great uncle Ford is saying. He’s rubbing at his chin, eyebrows lowered in a scowl, watching Bill as if he expects the demon to combust at any moment. “But perhaps some time spent trapped as an ordinary, powerless teenage girl will be good for you.”

Dipper tries not to flinch at the words  _ordinary_ ,  _powerless_ , or  _girl_. He also tries not to look at Bill, still swinging his legs and looking at Dipper through his one good eye, creepy grin flashing white in the study’s gloom. “Sure, absolutely,” says Bill. “We can all have a nice lesson in humanity and all that shotgun Dipper’s bed!”

“That seems appropriate,” says great uncle Ford, even as Dipper is saying, “Wait? What? No!”

“Actions have consequences, boy,” says Ford, which is his third favorite homily. “You manifested Bill, that means she’s your responsibility to care for. Food, shelter… instructing her on correct human behaviors.”

This is a nightmare. A literal nightmare. Dipper is going to smother Bill in his sleep. “He already knows ‘correct human behaviors’! He just pretends not to because he’s an asshole!”

“Dipper! We do not use that language in this house!” snaps Ford. Then: “In my part of this house. And we do use correct pronouns.  _And_  when we manifest familiars, we take responsibility for them. Admittedly, I would’ve suggested a more manageable form, say a cat. But what’s done is done, and now you’ll have to live with the consequences. Understood?” He gives Dipper such a look of sheer, insurmountable patriarchal sternness that, in another universe, Dipper can imagine this whole situation being cooked up as a plot between Ford and Bill to teach him some kind of lesson. In another universe. In this one, Dipper’s pretty sure they still hate each other. 

Pretty sure.

“Dipper?” Ford drawls the word out, clearly waiting for a response.

So Dipper tugs his hat down low over his eyes, scuffs one trainer against the rug, and mutters, “Yes, great uncle Ford.”

“Ooh! Ooh! Can I tell Mabel? I’m gonna tell Mabel!” Bill moves fast, off the desk and across the room in a streak of yellow and black. 

“Bill! No!” Dipper tries to grab him, misses, and then Bill is in the elevator, grinning fit to split his face in two. Dipper makes to follow, but Ford says, “Dipper?” And by the time Dipper has turned to respond, the elevator doors have slammed and the thing is rattling its ascent.

“Yes, great uncle Ford?”

Ford’s eyes flick to the retreating elevator, waiting until the rumble has stopped on the floor above. Then he sighs, something in his shoulders slumping as he brings up a hand to rub at his eyes beneath his glasses. 

“Dipper,” he starts, then stops, as if there’s something he wants to say but isn’t sure how he should say it. He looks old, Dipper thinks. Empirically, Dipper knows that this is true, but Ford has never really  _felt_  old, at least not in the way Dipper’s other grandparents feel old. Ford bends realities and warps the multiverse. He doesn’t have time to be old.

Except, apparently, for today. 

“Dipper, you’re a young man, now,” Ford says. “Part of that… Part of growing up is learning to make your own mistakes. Stanley and I won’t be around to protect you forever, and actions do have consequences. We’ve done our best to teach you, but some lessons have to be learnt the hard way. Do you understand?”

“Yes, great uncle Ford,” lies Dipper. He’s trying very hard not to fidget, not to imagine he can hear his sister’s outraged shrieks coming down from up above, through concrete and steel and soundproofing.

Ford gives a tired smile. “Good boy,” he says. “So, Dipper. This… incident with Bill. This is something you’ve done, and something we expect you to handle.”

“Okay, great uncle Ford.” Is that screaming? Dipper knows he shouldn’t be able to hear sounds from the house down here, but… but he’s pretty sure that’s screaming.

“But, Dipper? Remember you don’t have to do everything alone. Your sister, Stanley, and myself, we’re all here if you need us. There’s no shame in getting help from your family. That’s what families are for. It took me… It took me a long time to learn that. If there’s a single one of my mistakes I can spare you, this is it. Understood?”

“Yes, great uncle Ford. Thank you, great uncle Ford.” He’s going to kill Bill when he gets upstairs. Straight up murder the little demon, kick his ass so hard it’ll rip another hole into the Nightmare Realm. 

Ford sighs. “Off you go, boy,” he says. And if Dipper is halfway to the elevator before Ford’s finished speaking, then he never sees his great uncle’s worried expression.

* * *

His sister is waiting from him in the gift shop, arms folded, foot tapping. Bill is sitting on the counter, peering over Mabel’s shoulder, grinning his stupid grin. 

This time, Dipper really is dead.

* * *

“How are you even  _here_? This place is warded against you!” 

Later. Dipper has bruises from his sister and his arms ache from carrying the fold-out bed into the attic. Bill, being Bill, is uniformly unhelpful. Just sits on Dipper’s bed, grinning and watching.

“Flesh hides a multitude of sins,” Bill says.

“Firstly, ew. Creepy. Secondly, what?”

“The wards cut me off from the Mindscape,” Bill explains. “But in this fleshbag, I can still walk across the threshold.”

Dipper thinks he gets it. “You can’t do magic in the house. That’s why Ford thought you were an ‘ordinary’ ‘girl’.” So does Mabel, for that matter. Dipper isn’t about to disabuse either of their notions.

“I  _am_  an ordinary girl,” Bill states, very primly. “That’s what the deal was for, and that’s what I have delivered.”

“Yeah,” says Dipper. “Right.”

* * *

Grunkle Stan, it must be said, is not enthusiastic about having another mouth to feed. But he accepts the arrangement amidst a long string of dark muttering about “magic bullshit”. Mabel, in her Mabel way, has decided to serve her revenge by becoming Bill’s new official best friend and, in her words, adopted sister. Which results in Dipper getting kicked out of his own bedroom for the afternoon, “While we do girl stuff.”

“Like what?” Dipper asks, standing excluded outside the bedroom door, his sister peering at him through the crack. He’s already tried forcing his way in, but he’s pretty sure Bill is standing behind the jamb. Dipper might be able to overpower his sister (emphasis on “might”), but his sister and Bill Cipher? Not a chance. 

“Like paint our nails,” Mabel says, with an exaggerated sneer. “And talk about  _boys_.”

“Bill is a boy!”

“Dipper Pines!” his sister says. “Don’t be such an awful human being!”

“But—”

“Wil,” Mabel says, very pointedly. “Are you a boy or a girl right now?”

Confirming Dipper’s suspicion, Bill’s head appears around the doorframe, just above Mabel’s. “My agreement with Pine Tree was to appear as a fifteen year old human girl,” he announces. Dipper buries his face against his palm. Demon, indeed. 

“How  _very interesting_ ,” Mabel says, in a voice that promises pain. “Thank you so much, Wil. I won’t even  _ask_  why Dipper would have stipulated  _that_  form in particular. I’m sure that’s a  _private contract_  between the two of you. But since it happened, and us sisters need to stick together, what would you say; crackle coat or matte finish?”

“Why not both?” suggests Bill. 

“Mabel—”

“I love how you think, Wil. Sorry,  _brother_ , but this is girl time now.”

“Mabel, it’s not what you—”

“Bye!”

“—think!”

But he’s talking to a slammed shut door.

* * *

So his sister thinks he’s a pervert. That he bound Bill as some kind of personal sex demon. Which, firstly, ew, and secondly, if Dipper  _were_  the kind of guy to do that sort of thing (which he obviously isn’t and certainly hasn’t ever thought about ever no sir), his demon of choice would not have been Bill Cipher. Case in point why: basically this entire day. And Dipper gets it, now. Why Bill agreed so easily to this stupid thing in the first place. Why wouldn’t he, when it’s apparently such a fantastic opportunity to humiliate Dipper in front of his family?

Well. Whatever. Bill can be a jerk if he wants. He’s still contractually obliged to fulfil his end of their deal, and Dipper? Dipper was going to be reasonable. Be kinda cool about it, let Bill do his Bill thing. Sure, they’ve had their problems in the past, but Dipper had through they were starting to get beyond that. There was that whole Nightmare Realm thing back in Dipper’s first summer, but they dealt with that. Then a year or so of Bill sulking like the big angular baby he is. But this summer? This summer the guy’s been kinda helpful, at least to Dipper. They’ve done a few small contracts and things had been working okay, and it’s not like Dipper  _trusts_  Bill, exactly, but…

But he is kinda cool. For a floating triangle. At least, Dipper had thought so. Now, he’s not so sure.

Which is why he spends the afternoon in the den, trying to ignore the giggling coming from upstairs. He’s hunched over his notebook, pen chewed to oblivion, pages of ink-blotted dot point scrawl spread in front of him.

This is The Plan. No more of Bill’s artistic license. From now on, he does what Dipper tells him.

* * *

After dinner. That’s when Bill will start behaving. Once he’s done giggling with Mabel, and showing off his newly painted nails to a bemused Grunkle Stan. 

“Wil knows how to do gradients,” Mabel is saying, “and overlays, and reverse French, and all kinds of things.”

“I have access to all human knowledge,” Bill adds, smug grin on his stupid glossy lips. 

“Tomorrow she’s going to teach me contouring,” Mabel adds. “I would sell my  _soul_  to learn contouring!”

“Deal, kid,” says Bill, even as Ford snaps, “Cipher! My house, my rules.” Which sets Bill muttering something, not in English, and Dipper to wondering what the pair talked about the other day. 

Seems Bill’s having secret conversations with a lot of people lately. A lot of people that aren’t Dipper.

He resolves to fix it, grabbing Bill as soon as dinner’s over with a, “Gotta go check something out in the forest for a bit okay bye!”

“I’ll come,” says Mabel, standing up.

Dipper cringes, but Bill beats him to it. “Not tonight,” he says. “I think your brother’s feeling a little left out. Needs some alone time with his one-eyed demon.”

Dipper groans, Mabel just screws her face into an expression of disgust. “Ee-ee-ew. No. Dipper. No.” As if what Bill said is somehow Dipper’s fault! Even the Stans exchange dubious glances, and Dipper just pulls his hat further down over his eyes. 

“You are the worst,” he tells Bill, and tries desperately to pretend his ears aren’t burning.

* * *

The forest is terrifying at night. Or would be, if not for the way every mook and monster scatters at Bill’s passing. Dipper’s used to it by now; it’s how he knows when Bill’s being a creeper and following him in the Mindscape. The only difference now is the sound of Bill’s footsteps and ragged breathing as they pick their way through the undergrowth.

To say Bill is not used to walking, on legs, through the forest is an understatement. He trips over roots and slips down even the smallest inclines, complaining the entire way. He’s only saved from a full faceplant when Dipper catches him, and there’s an awkward moment of the two of them, nose-to-blackhead-infested-nose. Bill’s body is warm and solid in Dipper’s arms, his breath damp and smelling a bit like sour milk from the ice-cream they had after dinner.

Dipper says:

“You’re wearing make-up!”

And then Bill is straightening up with a, “Of course I am, you unpainted sack of organs.” Then he snaps his fingers, a familiar glow flickering to life around his outline even as his feet leave the ground. “There,” he says, settling into his float. “Much more civilized. Where are we even _going_?”

Dipper looks around, then shrugs. “I dunno. Just some place I know.”

“Close your eyes and think of it,” says Bill.

“Why?”

“Just do it!”

They stare each other down in the gloom. Bill might be glowing, but the light doesn’t actually illuminate anything, and the forest is otherwise closing in around the dim LED of Dipper’s phone.

“Fine,” says Dipper after a moment. Then he closes his eyes, and imagines his clearing. It’s not far, a bend in a river, a good rock for sitting, wards strung up in the trees. Dipper found it years ago, has come back ever since. He never takes anyone with him, not even Mabel.

He feels a hand descend on his shoulder, then a weird… pressure against his mind. “Oh,” says Bill. “That place.” Then, before Dipper can ask what he means by that, there’s a feeling like the world suddenly vanishes from beneath his feet.

It only lasts a second. When it’s over, Dipper can hear the gentle babbling of a river. He opens his eyes, to find Bill staring at him, a slightly disappointed expression on his dumb-but-pretty face.

“What?”

“I thought I’d at least get a scream,” Bill confesses.

Dipper just scoffs and rolls his eyes. “Oh yeah,” he says. “Right. Like I’ve never teleported before. Please. Do you even know who I am?” He’s Dipper Pines, and he was traveling through time and other dimensions before his voice broke. Like a little short-range teleportation is going to faze him.

He’s feeling smug over this victory, but Bill doesn’t look annoyed from the announcement. Instead, he tilts his head, like he’s looking at Dipper properly, through his good eye. Then he grins, teeth bright and white and sharp against the gloom of the forest and the darkness of his skin. “Right,” he says. “You’re a Pines.”

Dipper can’t tell if this is supposed to be a compliment or an insult, so decides not to worry about it. “Whatever,” he says. He’s suddenly deeply aware how close they’re standing, how Bill’s hand is still warm and heavy through the fabric of his jacket. Dipper takes a step back, half-turning away, and tries not to feel the cold against his shoulder.

* * *

After that, they go through The Plan. Dipper brought his notes, and produces them from the inside pocket of his jacket. Bill takes them dubiously, reading through even as he reclines back in mid-air, as if he’s lying on some kind of invisible chaise longue. Dipper goes through the whole thing, end-to-end. Every activity, every contingency, every emotional beat.  _And then Pacifica comes in, and sees us holding hands_  is one.  _Then we Instagram it_  is another.  _Then you need to say_  features prominently.

It’s a good plan. Dipper spent a lot of time thinking it through, and he has great confidence it will work. In less than a week, Pacifia will be all-but begging him to ask her out.

And then Bill says:

“No.”

“What do you mean, ‘no’?”

“I mean no,” Bill says. He’s holding Dipper’s notes in one hand, and Dipper has half a second to think maybe it was a bad idea to give them all away before, yup. There they go, disintegrated in a burst of blue flame.

“I have copies,” Dipper says. “And you can’t opt out of our deal now.”

“Firstly,” Bill says, “yes I can. Secondly, no I’m not.”

“The plan is the deal.”

“No. The deal was to pretend to like you to try and make the Northwest girl jealous, so she’ll say yes when you ask her out at the Summerween Ball,” Bill points out.

“And this”—Dipper reaches into his  _other_  jacket pocket, retrieving copy number two of The Plan—“is how that’s going to happen.”

Bill makes a frustrated sort of sound, bringing his hands up as if gripping something just in front of his face. “A hundred thousand years your stinking species has been on this miserable ball of rock,” he says. “And sometimes I still just don’t  _get_  you.” Then, more specifically to Dipper: “Look, Pine Tree. You need to manipulate some kid’s feelings. You hired the best, i.e. me, to do it. We’ve had some laughs in the past, so in deference to that, I’m gonna to do you a favor by not letting you get in the way of your own success. So no, we don’t do things the Pine Tree Way. We do things the Cipher Way.”

“Uh-uh,” Dipper says. “We tried the today. Which was a disaster. The Cipher Way sucks.”

Bill rears back as if he’s been physically struck. “Excuse  _me_ ,” he says. “I got a bruise for you!” He pulls back his bangs and, yes, there’s a big purple splotch from Grenda’s duck. “I let you save Blondie from golems.”

Dipper can’t believe what he’s hearing. “You ratted me out! To Ford and Mabel!”

“I  _helped_  you! Stanford would’ve figured out what you were up to eventually. Then what do you think he would’ve done? And Shooting Star’s not an idiot either. She was already suspicious.”

“Right. So now she just thinks I’m… I’m some kind of pervert! That I’ve… That we’re…” Dipper makes vague gesture with his hands, like mashing two things together.

“I know,” Bill says. “Better that than the alternative.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Like I said, you sister isn’t stupid. And she’s Blondie’s friend. Getting your freak on with demons in the forest is one thing. She expects that from you—”

“Wait. What?”

“—But you think she’d be on your side if she knew what you were  _really_  doing?”

“What? What are you talking about?” What could possibly be worse than summoning demons to perv on?

Bill just rolls his eyes. Or, rather, eye, given the blue one doesn’t seem to move as much as the gold one does. “Pine Tree,” Bill says, “when you work that one out, you won’t need to call on the forces of darkness to help you get laid.”

“Oh, right,” snaps Dipper. “And I’m sure you’re Mr. Big Relationship Expert right there?”

“Of course I am. Like I keep telling you, I have access to all human knowledge.” Then, before Dipper can process that: “See, the problem with people like you and Stanford is you hear that and you think, ‘Hot damn, I’m gonna ask about time travel’. Or how to invest in the stock market. Or who to off to get control of the Senate. Knowledge is a lot of things, and you lot? You lot go for  _power_.” A sudden shift in color scheme, from black and yellow to red and white. Then back again. “And people like your sister? She asks how to paint rainbow nails. You know why she wanted to know that? Because Pacifica’s been trying to work out how to do the nails for her Summerween costume for a month, and still can’t get it right. Now Shooting Star can teach her.”

Dipper’s mouth is gaping. He can’t help it. “You… you taught Mabel something so she can impress Pacifica?” His voice is not squeaking when he says that. No way. “Why didn’t you teach me?”

“Because,” Bill says, “you didn’t ask.”

“But—”

Bill just waves off the protests, reclining back in the air. “Relax, Pine Tree. It’s all part of the plan.”

“ _How_?”

“I told you,” Bill says. “You wanna manipulate someone, you hire the best. If you could figure it out yourself you wouldn’t need me to do it for you, now would you?”

Dipper scowls. “I wish you wouldn’t put it like that.”

“Like what?”

“’Manipulating’.” Because he isn’t, is he? It sounds so dirty when Bill puts it like that. So… hurtful. Dipper doesn’t want to hurt Pacifica. Pretty much exactly the opposite, in fact. 

“What would you call it, then?”

“I don’t know!” Dipper can’t meet Bill’s eyes—or eye—when he says it. “It’s just… just testing the waters.” He kicks a nearby stone into the river, it lands with a dull little plop. “It’s not like I asked you to  _make_  her fall in love with me!” He is totally not blushing. Nuh-uh. Not blushing, not talking about his feelings with an evil demon. That is not a thing that he is doing. 

“Didn’t you?” Bill asks, and Dipper can’t tell if he’s honestly confused or just being an asshole.

“No!” Dipper snaps. He’s not going to let Bill make him feel guilty. He’s just not. “I just… I just need someone to, y’know.” This prompts nothing from Bill but a quizzical look, so Dipper huffs. “She just needs to… to get some urgency. If she thinks she’s got some competition, that someone else is gonna get to me before she is…” And that’s fine, right? Nothing wrong with a bit of healthy competition.

Bill says: “What if she doesn’t love you?”

It’s such a bluntly brutal thing to say, and Dipper flinches as if he’s been hit. “She… We’re friends,” he says, voice not nearly as confident as he’d like. “She just needs to… to be able to see me as someone who could be  _more_  than a friend.” All of this is perfectly reasonable, and logical, and there’s no way Dipper is going to let Bill, of all people, make him feel bad about it. Because he’s got nothing to feel bad about. Nothing.

* * *

“How ‘bout that one?”

“Er, that one… eighty-six light years. But it’s not really ‘one’ star, it’s four. And the one practically sitting right on top of it? That’s two. So, really, that’s six stars, all clumped in right there.”

As it turns out, when he’s not giving Dipper shit about his love life and/or attempting to open portals to the Nightmare Realm, Bill is actually sort of cool. He’s also a massive show-off, and Dipper’s discovered that, by sticking to mainstream topics and answering any prevarications with, _Okay, well I guess I can just Google it when I get home_ , he can make Bill answer all sorts of random trivia.

“How far away are they from each other?”

“A light year, give or take.” They’re both lying on their backs on the rock, stream bubbling down below, night sky turning slowly up above. It’s… nice. Dipper doesn’t have a better word for it, just that Bill is still Bill but he hasn’t tried anything even approaching awful in at least an hour, and he’s close enough that his curls are tickling Dipper’s cheek. Dipper, who’s really only ever seen Bill at his most manic, and now is seeing some sort of different Bill. Dipper, who’s wondering if maybe this is the Bill his great uncle knew, or thought he knew.

Which is probably why he asks:

“Bill? What was Ford like? Back when you knew him, I mean.”

“A lot like you,” Bill answers, without hesitation. “I mean, that’s what you want to hear, right? That you two are alike?”

It is, but: “Aren’t we?”

“Not really, no.” Dipper sees a flash of movement in the corner of his eye; Bill waving a hand around in a dismissive gesture.

Dipper says nothing. This is another thing he’s started to work out; Bill hates silence. Will fill it up with whatever manic talking he can.

“I mean, he was older, for a start.” Bingo. Score one, Dipper. “That changes things. A lot. More than it should, really, but you meatsacks are so weird about time. So there was that. Oh, and he had a lot to prove, to himself more than anything. I mean, you? You’ve been getting chased by monsters since you needed to stand on a box to reach the top shelf in the bathroom. You know this stuff is real, have plenty of people who’ll back you up. Stanford, not so much. He wanted to show the world.”

“Did…” Dipper’s not sure how to ask this next question. But Bill’s in a talking mood and he has to know, so: “Were you ever… I mean… Did you ever think of great uncle Ford… Were you ever actually friends?”

And Bill says:

“Who says we’re still not?”

The answer is so startling, so unthinking, that Dipper turns his head to the side. He finds Bill’s already done the same, and now they’re staring eyes-to-eye, inches apart against the stone.

“I…” Dipper starts. “I thought you hated each other?”

Bill sighs. “It’s a bit more complicated than that, Pine Tree,” he says.

“You betrayed him! You had him build a portal to the Nightmare Realm!” Dipper isn’t angry, or even accusatory. He just wants to  _know_.

“I did my job,” Bill says. “And Sixer got me fired. Permanently. Now I have to figure out what to do with the rest of my existence.” A pause. “I had it all figured out. He would’ve been fine. And we were gonna have a great time, at least the way I figured it. I didn’t expect he’d be so… concerned about the rest of your stupid rotting planet.”

“And… the second time? The other year?”

Bill shrugs. “I was still mad,” he says. “I know Stanford’s all like, ‘Bill Cipher betrayed me’”—Bill imitating of Ford’s voice is scarily good—“but did anyone ever stop to think that maybe  _I_  felt betrayed, too? Spoiler alert: no. No, they did not. He was my friend, Pine Tree. He was supposed to  _help_  me. We were gonna usher in a new world and it was gonna be amazing. He was gonna be a god, an entire future of parties and cosmic chess. Not my fault he got cold feet at the last minute.”

Dipper blinks. When he does, Bill is still there. Still scowling, eye focused on something a long time ago and far, far away. And this? This has never occurred to Dipper to think about before. They’d always assumed Bill did what he did because he was capital-E Evil, and that was that. They’d never thought maybe he’d genuinely believed in what he was doing, genuinely believed Ford would join him in it.

Dipper says:

“I’ve… never thought of it like that before.”

Bill’s eye comes back to the present, focusing on Dipper as it does. “I know,” he says.

A tiny part of Dipper is hearing Bill’s voice, over and over, saying,  _You wanna manipulate someone, you hire the best._  The other part is very focused on the way the moonlight casts Bill’s dark skin in a rich and golden glow.

* * *

When they get back to the Shack, the Stans are waiting on the porch.

“Looks like I owe you twenty,” says Grunkle Stan.

“I’m out. I’d borrow some from Dipper but seems all he’s got are Yankee dimes,” says Ford. Then the twins cheers each other with their beers, and Dipper feels like he’s missed something important.

* * *

“Psst. Pine Tree?”

“Bill. It’s like midnight. Go to sleep.”

A pause, then: “Is that what we’re supposed to be doing here?”

Dipper sits up, the soft sounds of his sister’s snoring coming from the far side of the room. Meanwhile, on the bed—Dipper’s bed—Bill is lying on his back, stiff and staring at the ceiling.

“Haven’t you ever slept before?” Dipper asks.

Bill turns his head, just enough to give Dipper a look of utter condescension. “Dream. Demon,” he says.

Right, Dipper thinks. Right.

He looks at Bill, then back at his sister (still asleep), then back at Bill. Then he sighs. “Move over,” he says.

“Why?” But Bill is doing as instructed, and before he can talk himself out of it, Dipper is lying next to him in the bed. It’s hard and narrow and weird, Dipper perched on the edge of the mattress so as not to accidentally brush any body parts against Bill’s. But it is what it is.

“Close your eyes,” Dipper says.

Bill does so. It’s a weird feeling, Dipper thinks. Being able to order around Bill Cipher. Weird, and… kinda cool.

“Mom used to do this for me,” Dipper says, “when I had trouble sleeping.” He reaches out with one finger, stroking it against Bill’s face so lightly he’s barely touching the tiny hairs, let alone skin. Bill jumps a little at the first touch, then relaxes as Dipper’s finger continues to move. Across his brow, his cheeks, down the length of his nose…

“Oh,” Bill says.

“Okay?” Dipper asks. They’re talking in hissed whispers, Mabel still snoring in the background.

“… Yeah,” Bill says after a moment. “Yeah. It’s okay.”

“Just try and focus on the feeling,” Dipper says. “Don’t think about anything else. You’ll fall asleep in no time.”

He’s right, of course. Dipper’s been on the receiving end of this a million times; plagued by anxieties and nightmares, soothed by a mother’s touch. It works on Bill just as easy as it works on a human, and within ten minutes Bill’s breath evens out, eyelids heavy and lips slightly parted.

Dipper is still watching those lips when his own eyes side closed.

That night, he doesn’t dream.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUST](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_cK_cIydHY) UST UST UST UST! \m/


	4. Chapter 4

Consciousness comes back slowly, seeping through a warm tangle of limbs and the fluttering sound of another heart beneath his ear. He turns into that sound, feeling cotton beneath his cheek, his world full of the smell of sleeping teen. It should be gross. It isn’t. It’s… comforting. Alive. Human. He shifts closer to it, limbs tightening around the warm, firm figure that’s here with him, curled up in his bed, beneath his sheets. That doesn’t resist when he pushes his hips against a muscled thigh, creating a different sort of warmth. One that has nothing to do with blankets or the thin rays of sunlight filtering through the attic window. One that has everything to do with heartbeats and skin and sweat, with the slow rock of his hips and the soft whine in his throat and—

And it’s about now the screaming starts. 

The screaming starts and Bill lurches upright, fingers buried in his hair. Dipper is against the headboard in an instant, curled up around himself, blankets pulled up to hide the morning wood he’d just been… just been…

His sister’s right. He’s a pervert.

Bill is still screaming like someone’s sawing his leg off, and all Dipper can do is whimper in the corner and say, “I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry” over and over. And then Mabel is there, grabbing Bill’s hands, lowering them from his hair, trying to get him to focus on her rather than whatever horror he thinks he’s seen. 

Bill keeps saying something about falling, and running, and being eaten alive, and it’s about now the Stans burst in, brandishing fists and flashing technology.

“What is going on in here?” Ford demands. 

“I… I think Wil had a nightmare,” Mabel says, and… oh.

Oo-oo-oh.

Dipper relaxes, just a little. 

Bill is saying: “I don’t  _have_  nightmares! I  _am_  nightmare! A living piece of the horrors that lurk beyond the veil! I command the Mindscape—”

“Not in my house you don’t,” Ford points out. 

Bill looks up at him with such a combination of wounded pride and existential terror that’s it’s hard not to feel sorry for the guy. Just a little bit. Irony and all.

* * *

“I’m never doing that again.”

Later. Dipper is teaching Bill the finer points of morning ablutions, which means they’re both crowded around the one tiny sink, trying to learn to shave. Dipper thinks it says a lot about his life that a triangle impersonating a girl in a fake boy’s body can apparently grow a better beard than he can.

“You have to sleep,” Dipper says. “You’ll literally hallucinate yourself to death if you don’t.”

“And that’s different from sleeping how?” Bill asks. He’s watching what Dipper’s doing, unconcerned with the notion of someone else approaching his face with sharp blades in hand. 

“Not that I don’t love irony,” Dipper says. “But isn’t this kind of a problem you’ve made for yourself?” The razor makes soft  _schiikt-schiikt_  sounds as it passes over Bill’s skin. Dipper is hit by a sudden images of himself, pushing down a bit too hard. Of Bill’s skin splitting open like overripe fruit, thick red blood oozing down his chin and neck. The thought is so sudden and so vivid it nearly makes Dipper physically cringe. Then feel like some kind of awful pervert. The realization that Bill would probably just laugh if he knew doesn’t help.

“I control the Mindscape,” Bill insists. “I couldn’t control this.”

“That’s what dreaming is. Mostly.” Dipper’s been able to lucid dream—to actively control his own Mindscape—for as long as he can remember. It’s a talent that’s only gotten more pronounced in the last few years, for obvious reasons. Still, he has to know he’s dreaming in the first place to get the trick to work, which doesn’t always happen. Particularly if Bill doesn’t show up.

In the waking world, Bill says: “So for you, dreaming is a black void punctuated by brief flashes of helpless terror?”

“I guess.”

“And you enter this state voluntarily? Every night?”

“It’s not ‘voluntarily’, exactly. Humans have to sleep. You know that. ‘Access to all human knowledge’, remember?” A thought strikes Dipper, and he straightens up. “Hey. Wait a second. You know how to give manicures but you don’t know how to shave?”

“Of course I know how to shave,” Bill says, unapologetic. “But you seemed to be enjoying yourself. I didn’t want to be rude.”

Dipper growls out, “Asshole!” and shoves the razor at Bill. He tries to convince himself he’s not blushing.

Bill just laughs, takes the razor and begins to show that, yes. He’s perfectly adept at shaving his own stupid face. “And I know you have to sleep, too,” he says. “I’ve just never thought about how awful it is for you until now.”

“It is not awful.” Dipper grabs the toothbrush and toothpaste, perhaps a touch too harshly. 

“Then why don’t you do it more often?” Bill counters, stupid smug smile on his stupid smug face. 

And, okay. Maybe Dipper’s not exactly the best person to be extolling the virtues of voluntary sleeping. Not when his own schedule, more often than not, involves staying awake until he passes out. But still. “I have reasons,” he snaps. “They’re yellow and have three sides and one big fat smug eye.”

“Just doin’ my job, Pine Tree,” says Bill. Dipper decides not to mention Bill’s recently acquired unemployment.

* * *

Twenty minutes later, he’s regretting not taking the jab when he had the chance.

“Oh yeah,” Bill says, mouth full of half-chewed cereal. “You invited Pacifica over today. I forgot to tell you.”

“I what? When?”

“Yesterday,” says Bill. Then, miming a phone with his fingers and giving a terrifyingly perfect imitation of Dipper’s own voice: “’Pacifica? Oh, hi. It’s Dipper. Um, so, like. This is kinda nerdy, but I was wondering… Um. Wondering if you wanted to come over and play Dungeons, Dungeons, and More Dungeons with us tomorrow? Yeah. Me and Wil. I mean, you don’t have to if you’re busy or— Oh, you will? Awesome. Well… Awesome! See you then!’” He mimes hanging up. The old fashioned way, like he’s putting a phone back down in a cradle, but Dipper isn’t paying attention to that. Not when he’s too busy hyperventilating. 

“You invited Pacifica over for DDnMD?” His voice isn’t squeaking. It just isn’t. Not in front of his whole family. “You made her think  _I_  invited her over for DDnMD?”

“Uh, that’s what I just said.”

“ _Why_? Pacifica… She doesn’t want to play Dungeons, Dungeons, and More Dungeons!”

“Results would indicate otherwise,” Bill points out. Then: “You know she loves math, right?”

Dipper… stops. “What?”

“It’s true,” Mabel says. “Pacifica is a  _huge_  math nerd. Like, as huge as you, even. It’s why she’s so good at mini golf. Like, geometry and angles and stuff.”

Dipper did not know this. “I… Why didn’t I know this?” Then, to Bill: “Why did you?”

“You didn’t ask,” Mabel says. “Wil did.” She sounds annoyingly smug. It’s not like Mabel doesn’t know he has a massive crush on Pacifica and has since like forever. Or at least since Wendy announced she was going interstate for college. She’s never been weird about it before. Dipper shoots her A Look, but she’s too busy talking to Bill about moisturizer to notice.

* * *

Apparently Pacifica wasn’t the only person Bill invited to DDnMD.

“It’s been a while since we’ve played,” says great uncle Ford, inspecting his game set-up on the floor of the den. 

“Right,” says Dipper, laughing nervously. “Not since that time we accidentally summoned Probabilitor.” He loves Ford, he really does. And the man loves DDnMD. And Dipper loves that, he really does, and they should play more sometime, totally, except… except sometime not with Pacifica around.

“Hm?” says Ford. “Probabilitor?” A blank look for a moment, then: “Oh, no. No, I didn’t mean that. I meant with Bill.” He goes back to flicking through books and calculating tables.

Dipper says: “You… you played DDnMD with Bill?”

“Mm,” says Ford. “Yes. And just to warn you, he’s a dreadful rules lawyer. Absolutely awful.”

Dipper would be he is, except: “I thought you only played old people games? Like cosmic chess?”

Ford actually laughs. “I gather you’ve never played chess with Bill. If you consider it an ‘old people’ game.”

“Um,” says Dipper.

“Ask him to teach you some time.” Ford seems to think for a moment. “Although, I’m not sure how well it would work outside the Mindscape.” Then a shrug. “I’m sure he’ll improvise.”

“Is that… is that, y’know. Wise?”

“No,” says Ford, not looking up. “But I think you’re a little beyond ‘wise’ when it comes to Bill Cipher, aren’t you?”

* * *

The worst part is, Bill’s right: Pacifica loves DDnMD. She takes a little while to warm up to it, to get her head around the concept and the rules, but once she’s in the game, she’s in the game.

Ford sticks around for about an hour, before announcing he has work to get on with and thanking them all for, quote-unquote, “reminding an old man to have some fun once in a while.”

“Your other great uncle’s kind of cool,” Pacifica tells Dipper once Ford’s gone. It occurs to Dipper she’s probably never actually met the guy before, at least not in any situation that doesn’t involve screaming and explosions. Ford has been re-appointed as the official legal Standford Pines for a few years, with Stanley’s miraculious resurrection from the dead added to the long list of outstanding crimes against the man’s name. Even still, Ford doesn’t get out much. Doesn’t talk about why much, either, but Dipper gets the impression he doesn’t like crowds or open spaces.  _I’ve “gotten out” enough for a hundred lifetimes,_  Ford told him once.  _For now, I’m just enjoying the quiet._

Back in the here-and-now, Bill says: “Dipper’s whole  _life_  is pretty cool!” He’s in full-tilt Wil-mode, eyelashes and uptalk dialed to eleven. “We have nothing like any of this in Missoula.” He’s leaning across Dipper to talk to Pacifica, practically falling into Dipper’s lap. Dipper tries not to notice.

“It’s really not me that’s cool,” Dipper says instead. “It’s this town. And we’re only here for the summer. Pacifica has to live here all year.”

“Our mansion was cursed by an evil lumberjack ghost once,” Pacifica adds. “It turned all my parents’ party guests to wood.”

“Awesome!” enthuses Bill, though Dipper is 100% certain he already knows this story, in the way Bill knows everything about Gravity Falls. Still, Pacifica seems pleased by the praise, and Dipper is pleased when Bill asks, “So how did you get rid of it? The ghost, I mean?”

Pacifica bites her lip, gives Dipper a strange little glance. “Um,” she says. “It was Dipper, actually.”

“It was both of us,” Dipper puts in. “I couldn’t’ve done it without you.” Sharing praise is good, right? Girls like that? Dipper does a quick check and… and yeah, Pacifica seems to like that. A++ good job, Dipper!

So they reminisce for a while, telling old stories to an enraptured Wil. Or, a Bill doing an awfully good impression of being enraptured. He asks lots of questions that end up with answers that involve “and then Dipper saved us by”, which Dipper makes sure to counter with a “but I couldn’t have done it without”. 

There are a lot of those, Dipper’s starting to realize. In fact, maybe every heroic thing he’s ever done. He’s never really thought about it before now, just how much he relies on Mabel and Grunkle Stan and great uncle Ford. On Pacifica and Candy and Grenda. On Wendy and Soos, at least before they both moved away, to college and Portland respectively. 

The realization must show on his face, because the conversation around him stops, Pacifica asking what’s wrong.

“I just… when I was a kid,” Dipper starts, “I used to think I had to do everything by myself. That I was the only person I could trust. I mean. It was something Ford wrote, in one of his journals, back before I knew him: ‘trust no one’.”

“Like from that old show?” Pacifica asks. “With the aliens and the FBI agents?”

“ _The X-Files_ ,” Dipper says. “Yeah.” Old show indeed, but Dipper marathoned the whole thing on Netflix like last winter. He’s still not sure whether he actually enjoyed it or just over-identified.

“’Trust no one’ was the meme,” Bill says. “But the point of it is that it’s ironic. In that the rhetoric of isolationist paranoia is deconstructed by the events of the narrative itself.”

“Whoa there, Roger Ebert,” says Pacifica, but she’s laughing, and it’s not unkind.

Dipper says, “What do you mean?”

“Think about it,” says Bill. “The consistent driving force of the series is the fundamental bond of trust and companionship that forms between the paranoid genius, Mulder, and the pragmatic realist, Scully. They form a pair of complimentary opposites, grounding each other in a way that protects them from their own excesses and faults. The fact that their trust-bond is both unconditional and unassailable is the primary driver that allows them both to unravel anything at all about the conspiracy they’re involved in, but that also acts as a litmus test to detect outside interference in their investigations. In effect, any force that assails that bond, in any way, is an untrustworthy force, while any that reinforces it, is not. Q.v. Director Skinner, whose transition from ambiguous authority figure to trusted mentor hinges on his support of the relationship between the two principle characters. In short, while the show tagline may be ‘trust no one’, this is fundamentally ironic as the ultimate message of the narrative is that trust and trustworthiness, while fragile, are the only reliable weapon against a hostile world.”

There’s a pause. Then Pacifica says:

“Wow.”

And Dipper thinks:

_Over-identification. Definitely over-identification._

* * *

Bill picks up where Ford left off and, Dipper won’t lie, the game gets weird. Not in the Gravity Falls way, just in the Cartoon Network way. Or the way, Dipper supposes, of an entity more comfortable with the logic of dreams than the waking world. So it’s weird, but it works, it totally works. Even if it does take him and Pacifica a good hour to figure out how, and maybe that’s part of the game, too. Giggling together as they conspire against Bill, sitting smug behind his game master’s screen. Dipper is close enough to Pacifica to feel the brush of her bangs against his cheek, feel the warmth of her body next to his, smell the scent of whatever perfume or deodorant or whatever it is she’s wearing. She’s so amazing, and happy, and really great at DDnMD and hasn’t called it lame or laughed at Dipper for liking it. She likes it, and Dipper likes her, and everything is right with the world.

* * *

“I had a really great time today,” Pacifica says. “Thank you for inviting me.”

_Well, it actually wasn’t me, it was my manifested mind demon familiar,_  is, Dipper thinks, while truthful, probably not the right response. So instead he says, “Any time.” And then: “I, er. I wasn’t sure if you’d be interested. But B— But Wil suggested it.”

He’s kicking himself as soon as the words come out, in case Pacifica takes them to mean he didn’t want her there. Which he didn’t. Sort of. But only because he’d thought she wouldn’t be into it, would just kind of sit there awkwardly out of some kind of obligation, secretly adding Dipper to her mental Losers List.

But what Pacifica’s actually doing is smiling, looking down and tucking her long blonde hair back behind an ear. “You know,” she says. “I’ve always wanted to play. Dungeons, Dungeons and More Dungeons, I mean. Ever since I was little. But… none of my friends were into it, you know? The boys used to play in grade school at lunchtimes, and I always… It sounds stupid now, but I always wished they’d invite me to join in. But they didn’t.” A pause. Then, “Probably because we used to call them losers and trip them over in the hallways.” She screws up her nose at the memory, a sort of self-deprecating apologetic disgust. “I wish we hadn’t done that.”

Funny, Dipper thinks. Because he’s been that kid, the one who’s laughed at and picked on by the popular girls. Or, to be truthful, there’s no “been” about it. That’s who he is, at least back in Piedmont. A lot of things are different in Gravity Falls, he thinks. Least of all himself. 

“People change,” he says. “And I’m really glad you came today. Maybe we can play again some time?”

“That’d be awesome,” is Pacifica’s response. She’s standing on the Shack’s porch, driver idling her Rolls in the dirt behind her. Dipper is leaning in the doorframe, wondering if he should kiss her. It wouldn’t be difficult; she’s very close, all Dipper would have to do is lean forward, just a little, and…

… and it occurs to Dipper he has absolutely no idea how to kiss someone. Not in the way he wants to kiss Pacifica, anyway. Not the familial peck-on-the-cheek, but the straight-up Hollywood dip—pun intended—with open mouths and swelling music. And tongue? Somehow? How does that even work, anyway? Tongue and nose and hands and so much to coordinate, and now he’s been staring at Pacifica for long enough for things to get awkward, and the moment (if it was a moment? Dippers pretty sure it was a moment) has passed. 

“See you round, Dipper,” says Pacifica. Then she gives a little wave.

Then she’s gone.

* * *

“I need to know how to kiss.”

What’s that old saying? Might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb. Well, too late for that. Dipper’s pretty sure he’s up to a whole flock about now. 

It’s him and Bill, back at the river rock. Dipper’s been thinking about this afternoon with Pacifica for the last few hours and, well. This is what he’s come up with. At worst, Bill is going to laugh at him. At best, Dipper’s gonna learn something.

In the end, he gets both, with Bill bursting out into a laugh that sends the gnomes scurrying from the bushes. Dipper has just enough time to go scarlet from toes to ears when the laughter abruptly ceases and Bill adds, “Okay sure, Pine Tree. What do you want to know?” Access to all human knowledge, indeed. 

“I just…” Dipper starts. Then: “I can’t… I mean, with the hands and the nose and… And I just…”

And Bill is just looking at him, head titled to use his good eye, the golden light of sunset catching in his curls. He really does make a stunning girl, with soft glossy lips and dark eyeliner that does the little swoosh thing at the end. Dipper has a sudden flash of memory from the morning, before the screaming started. Of the warmth and smoothness of Bill’s skin, the feel of his breath and bones shifting beneath firm muscle. 

Dipper thinks:  _What the hey._

And says, “This is stupid. Can I just… just kiss you instead? For practice.”

Bill… blinks. Eyelids slamming down like a shutter over whatever half second of reaction he’d been about to have. When they open again, Bill is just Bill, condescending and aloof. “You wanna kiss me?”

“Yes,” says Dipper, before his mind can reconsider.

“Your first kiss?”

“It’s not like it would count,” Dipper adds quickly. “I mean, you’re not even real.” A thought occurs to him: “You  _have_  kissed someone before, right?”

Bill looks away, brow furrowing. “What do you think, you sweaty meatsack?”

“Right,” says Dipper. Right. Because Bill is usually an arbitrarily sized floating triangle, but he’s also been around possessing people and making trouble since like the dawn of time or whatever. Dipper’s sure kissing is pretty low down the list of Bill’s carnal sins. He also tries very hard not to think too much about what might be further up the top, fails, and ends up with a too-long pause of too-awkward silence. 

Finally, Bill snaps, “Well? Or are you gonna sit there gawking until the inevitable oblivion of the end of time claims us all?”

“Shut up, Bill,” Dipper retorts. He’s blushing, but determined not to show it. Instead marches the three steps over to where Bill is leaning against a tree. He’s slightly taller than Dipper is, and looks down with an arched brow as Dipper corners him against the bark. 

No one says anything. Dipper is close enough to feel the warmth of Bill’s body again, a little island of heat in the growing chill of the afternoon shade. It’s… nice. Being this close to someone, even if that someone is Bill. Dipper decides not to think too hard about the context, just focuses on the specifics. Like the zit he can see now growing on the side of Bill’s nose, painted over with dark bronze make-up. 

Bill’s lips are slightly parted; Dipper’s tongue flicks across his own.  _Okay, Pines,_  he thinks.  _You can do this._

He can, and he does, darting forward to press his lips against Bill’s. It is… weird. So weird. Not like a kiss on the cheek at all. This is… wet. And tastes like someone else’s mouth and, okay. Okay, that was Experiment #1. Just a quick test to see Bill’s reaction. To see whether he’ll push Dipper away, cackling his mad cackle, ranting about stupid meatsacks or fleshbags or whatever his go-to insult for the day happens to be. 

Bill… is not doing any of those things. Instead, he has his head tilted down a little, eyes closed. Almost like he wants to be kissed again. So Dipper obliges him. Slower, this time. Lips gently brushing over Bill’s own. 

Bill makes a strange little noise, like a strangled whimper. Frustrated, perhaps, with Dipper’s performance. Because Bill, in his asshole Bill way, has apparently not decided to take the lead, to apply his omniscient powers into teaching Dipper how not to make an idiot of himself with Pacifica. Instead, Bill’s doing his rules lawyer thing again, because Dipper said he wanted to kiss Bill. Not that he wanted Bill to kiss him back.

Sloppy language. Sloppy outcomes.

Well, fine. If Bill wants to be like that, Dipper is just going to have to… to kiss him so well that he’ll have no other choice but to respond. Be the one overcome by his own stupid teenage fleshbag hormones for once. Now that Dipper’s found himself a challenge, he leaps into it with enthusiasm, one hand coming up to stroke along Bill’s lean hip. Another to cup the smooth skin just beneath his jaw. Bill is so stiff beneath Dipper’s touch he’s all-but trembling. Still, he’s not trying to get away, and is half-returning Dipper’s kiss with his own halting motions.

Dipper pushes a little further, flicking his tongue out to brush soft lips. Bill shudders, mouth opening a little more. Then Dipper’s tongue is touching Bill’s and… okay. He won’t lie. It’s weird. Super weird. But kind of thrilling, too. He’s kissing someone! Like, for real! With tongue! Kissing someone and being kissed back, definitely being kissed back, even if Bill’s body is still stiff, hands balled into fists against his side. 

This, Dipper decides, is definitely not on. He leans forward, closing the last half step of distance until his body is pressed wholly against Bill’s. The sensation of it sends a jolt of warmth straight between his thighs, and Dipper has one panicked moment to think maybe, just maybe, this was a bad idea, before he decides he doesn’t care. So what if he gets a boner? It’s just Bill. Bill in a stupid teenage boy body, so it’s basically a challenge, right? Who can give who the most boner, or whatever.

Bill certainly seems to think so. His hands have come up, now. Are resting against Dipper’s waist. Dipper can feel the edge of one long finger ghosting against the skin just above the waistband of his jeans. He’s so achingly aware of that finger, in a way he isn’t even really noticing what his mouth is doing. Kissing and being kissed, holding and being held, and yeah. He’s half-hard, half-hard and breathless, heart hammering in his chest, a strange staticky feeling building just below his gut. 

He doesn’t even think about where he needs to put his nose. It’s such a remote concern, in the here-and-now. His nose just goes, and so do his hands; the latter running up and down Bill’s sides and across his chest, feeling the firm cords of muscle hidden beneath soft cotton.

When he finally pulls back, it’s not far. Just enough to rest his forehead against Bill’s, breath mingling with ragged breath. Bill’s fists balled tight in Dipper’s t-shirt.

“There,” Dipper says. “How did I do?”

The words strike him as inconsolably funny for some reason, and he starts giggling. Which earns him a scowl and a snapped, “What?” from Bill. 

Bill, who looks just as flushed and breathless as Dipper feels, and he figures that if he can do that—can make an ancient mind demon pant—then he must not be doing too bad. 

Still, he thinks. Practice makes perfect.

* * *

It’s been a long practice session. They’ve both ended up on the ground, propped up against the tree and against each other. They’ve moved on from frantic Frenching. Are now more into a stage of lazy, nearly chaste kissed, coupled with eagerly exploring hands and a side order of surreptitious, fully clothed frottage. Bill’s much more relaxed than he was when they started this, but still oddly passive, lying beneath Dipper, looking up at him with hooded eyes.

“How’s your head?”

The bruise from Grenda’s duck is still there on Bill’s forehead, albeit hidden beneath his bangs. Dipper’s only just noticed it because he’s been having fun playing with Bill’s hair, running his fingers through the curls. 

Bill presses at the little patch of darker skin, then scowls. “It hurts,” he says. 

“Well, duh,” says Dipper. “It’s a bruise. ‘Pain is hilarious’, remember?”

“It’s… different.” Bill is being oddly reserved, all the manic edges knocked out of his voice.

“Different from when you’re bodyjacking someone else’s meatsack?”

“Yes,” Bill says. Then, “Everything is… different. Like this.” Definitely minus the usual Cipher mania. Then again, Dipper’s pretty sure he knows where most of Bill’s blood is, and it is not in the guy’s head.

He shifts a little, just to try, and is rewarded by Bill half-closing his eyes and letting out a breathy little gasp. The sound makes Dipper feel incorrigibly smug—incorrigibly powerful—but he hides it by asking, “How is it different?”

Either Bill really wants to tell him, or he’s too dozy right now not to, because he just says, “Everything feels… closer. Before, it was… Things would happen, and I knew they’d happened. But it didn’t matter. They weren’t happening to me. But this…” A pause, and this time it’s Bill who shifts his own hips, rubbing himself against Dipper’s thigh. The movement is both oddly chaste while still somehow being the most lascivious thing Dipper’s ever experienced. Even through his jeans, he can tell Bill’s sporting some forest-worthy wood. He can definitely tell the shuddering exhale of breath against his neck raises goose flesh all up and down his arms.

“It’s different,” Bill finishes, not entirely eloquently. 

“Good different, or bad different?”

“Don’t know yet,” Bill says. 

“Well,” says Dipper, grinning his most Bill-worthy grin. “Let’s help you find out.”

* * *

“Psst, Pine Tree. You awake? Hey. Hey, Pine Tree.”

“Wha’? Bill? What? Why are you— why are you’re poking me?”

“I said, are you awake?”

“Ugh. I am now!”

“Good. Move over.”

“What? Why?”

“I can’t sleep. Move over.”

It’s very dark and very late. Or maybe early, Dipper isn’t sure. Somewhere up above, the stars glisten like spilled glitter. Somewhere across the far side of the room, Mabel snores like a freight train. Somewhere much closer, Bill is leaning over the mattress, looking at Dipper, his good eye gleaming burnished gold.

Dipper sighs, then shuffles to the far side of the bed. Ten minutes later, Bill is snoring, too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Flu-uu-uu-uu-uff. So. Much. [Fluff](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFZqpBhgS_8).

**Author's Note:**

> So apparently I have [a Tumblr](http://orphanfalls.tumblr.com/) now? Eek.


End file.
